A bombshell new report from The New York Post revealed a quiet but telling event last month.
A group of “bipartisan” former antitrust officials filed an amicus brief urging a federal judge to go easy on Google. These ex-DOJ and FTC lawyers claimed neutrality—but their arguments, as The Post noted, “closely match those of the defense offered by Google.”
And it’s no mystery why. Many of the signers have deep financial ties to the tech giant. Tad Lipsky runs a George Mason antitrust program backed by millions from Google. Another, Willard Tom, previously represented Google in court—a fact not disclosed in the filing.
This is the swamp in action. For decades, a rigged game has played out in Washington: bureaucrats regulate Big Tech with one eye on their next payday, then jump ship to cushy roles at the very companies they once oversaw. Everyone gets rich—except the American people.
But that era is over. There’s a new sheriff in town.
Trump-appointed FTC Commissioner Mark Meador recently laid out the vision for a new MAGA antitrust doctrine. The message is simple: “Big is bad.” Concentrated corporate power can be just as dangerous as big government, and it’s time conservatives stopped whitewashing it.
In a May interview, Meador condemned the practice of academics “renting out their Ph.D. and reputation to advocate for the interests of giant corporations.” In a separate May paper, he warned that the power accumulated by massive firms like Google should no longer receive a free pass. “To insist that just because a business is economically powerful does not mean it will behave badly,” he wrote, “is akin to expressing surprise that a gambler would place a risky bet after you gave him unlimited chips.”
This is not about punishing success; it’s about restoring accountability and protecting consumers, competition, and the constitutional balance of power.
Meador’s memo draws a sharp contrast—not just with past GOP orthodoxy, but with the Biden administration’s approach to antitrust, which too often veered into political theater.
Like the Trump DOJ and FTC, the Biden administration did not fear taking on monopolies; however, more often than not, its antitrust team went hunting for headlines instead of real threats.
When housing costs soared, they didn’t admit that Washington’s own inflationary policies were a major driver. They blamed a rent pricing algorithm. That’s the heart of the RealPage case, a lawsuit that tries to make a scapegoat out of software. As the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board put it, this was less about protecting renters than it was “an attempt to distract voters from frustration over the Biden Administration’s inflationary policies.” MAGA politicos went a step further, saying, “This suit attracted the attention of senior Trump campaign staffers for being a transparently obnoxious case of politically motivated lawfare.”
Similarly, the Visa case followed the same pattern. Yes, Visa is responsible for 60% of the debit card market, which is enough to warrant an investigation of potential consumer harms, but the administration’s theory of harm was paper-thin. It blamed modest transaction fees for “driving up the price of nearly everything,” as if a few cents on the dollar explains a national cost-of-living crisis. The argument was unserious—driven by political polling, not economics or the law.
That’s the key difference. While both the Biden and Trump antitrust teams are skeptical of corporate power, Biden’s team tried to use antitrust as a PR tool. Trump’s team is using it to take on actual threats to competition, consumer choice, and individual freedom.
Judge Amit Mehta already ruled that the company illegally monopolized search. Now, the Trump DOJ is proposing real remedies: spinning off Chrome, forcing Google to share search data, and breaking its stranglehold on the digital ad market.
No amicus brief from well-paid former officials will stop it. The American people are tired of a system where power and privilege always win. Under Trump’s watch, the revolving door is being slammed shut.
John Pierce is a trial lawyer and founder of the National Constitutional Law Union (NCLU). He is the former editor of the Harvard Law Review.